


Void

by MnemonicMadness



Series: Tony & Mantis [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Empathy, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, POV Mantis, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MnemonicMadness/pseuds/MnemonicMadness
Summary: Everyone would have expected for Mantis to react, to scream or rage the moment she touched Tony Stark. To feel anger or sadness or some other twisted thing. Instead, she doesn't react. She touches him and feels nothing.Based onthis Tumblr thread.





	Void

She finds him on the tower’s balcony, sitting on the small, wooden bench there, a glass of honey-coloured liquid in his hand. The sinking sun paints the sky in vivid reds and oranges, reflected on the liquid’s surface as though the glass is filled with sparkling rubies. The few clouds on the horizon are as bright as flames.

It’s a stunning sight, so beautiful that for a moment, she forgets what she came here to do, all she can do is stand still and drink in the view. But, as she soon notices when she steps closer, the man in front of her doesn’t seem to notice. He is looking towards the horizon just like she is, but his eyes are distant and unfocussed. She feels a twinge of sadness for him - so much beauty and yet he cannot see it.

The only sign that he has even noticed her arrival on the balcony is the tensing of his muscles. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t speak, and so she hesitates, unsure what to do.

From the moment she’d met him, Tony Stark has struck her as different. From what the others - his teammates - have told her, he was brilliant but brazen, loud and arrogant, yet he had been nothing but polite to her. He had listened attentively and spoken sure but softly. But despite this, there is a... _sadness_ to him, following him like an aura, a terrible sadness, deeper and darker than she has ever seen before, almost tangible even without touching him. Yet another thing they’ve warned her about in regards to him: not to touch him, not with the abilities she has.

They claimed that there’s something wrong with him. Some of his teammates joked that she’d “get an aneurysm from the sheer size of his ego”, others just said that “he’s got some serious issues”. But she can’t help it. If it doesn’t even take touching him to sense that wrongness, he must truly feel terrible and she finds herself wishing to help him.

So now she stands here, in front of that beautiful view the object of her worry cannot see. She decided against telling anyone, knows they would only have tried to talk her out of it, but ever since forcing Ego to sleep her confidence in her abilities has grown steadily. Her instincts scream at her that this man needs help and she knows she can provide it, at least a little bit.

Finally, she brings herself to greet him. “Hello.”

Her voice is quieter than she intended and her uncertainty is clearly audible, but now he finally does react. He looks up to where she’s standing and gives her a smile. It’s a nice smile, wide and cheeky and _almost_ sincere. Except, the sadness is still there. The fragile skin around his eyes crinkles as he puts on this perfect mask of a smile expertly, but the look in them doesn’t change.

Instead of a reply, he edges further to the side of the bench, making enough space for her to sit without risking accidentally brushing against him. He gestures to the empty space and turns back to the view he doesn’t see while she quickly walks over and sits beside him.

She is sure that he’s well aware of the way she’s observing him out of the corner of her eyes, but he still doesn’t speak, waiting for her to initiate a conversation if she wishes so. Unlike the others, who had drilled her with questions upon questions. She is glad for his silence, she never quite knows what to answer anyway. And she does need this last moment of apparent tranquillity.

She needs it to try and brace herself for what she is about to do. There is no telling exactly what the wrongness consists off, so she has to guess. Prepares herself for sadness and loneliness and anger.

It’s not enough. It isn’t even close to enough. There is nothing that could have prepared her for this.

When she reaches out, she does so quickly, not giving him a chance to pull away. His bare - scarred and calloused - hand twitches in a flinch as soon as hers makes contact with it. She pulls her composure tighter around herself, expecting sadness and loneliness and anger, but what she feels...

Nothing.

Empty. Quiet. Void. _Nothing_.

The _Nothing_ is so all-encompassing, so overwhelmingly empty and quiet that she feels like her ears must be ringing with the silence of it. She is lost, unprepared and adrift in the emptiness - an emptiness even surpassing the cold vacuum of space.

For a few terrible seconds, she panics. There must be something wrong with _her_! Have her abilities failed her? Has she fallen sick or failed to notice an injury? She cannot recall ever experiencing anything like this, there’s _always_ something. Different species - different individuals of different species experience emotions differently and with different intensity, but there’s always _something_. Even the most controlled, the most cold-hearted or the most ruthless... there’s always something. A spark, an echo, a twitch. Something _alive_.

But not with him. Desperately, she tries to reach further into the nothingness, tries to reach something, anything. Only emptiness meets her. Again, she almost panics as she can feel the Nothing all around her, seeping from his mind into her own like a shadow blocking out the vital sunlight.

She realises that even if not in what they implied, there were right about there being something wrong with him. Terribly, agonisingly wrong. She realises that her abilities work just fine and finds herself wishing they weren’t, but there’s no doubt. It’s _him_. He only has emptiness left inside.

For a moment she considers trying to comfort him, to give him something, anything. But she quickly reconsiders. Because even more wrong, even more terrible than that emptiness, is the thought of what had done this to him. What does someone have to go through to be driven to this point? To contain such an emptiness? How much does a sentient being have to suffer until even the last spark of _something_ is extinguished? How much suffering until it is worth replacing it with nothingness? Until someone is this truly _broken_?

And she knows that she cannot comfort him, because as suffocating and all-encompassing as the emptiness is, it is also fragile. She knows that he needs his emptiness because the alternative is too much to bear. She just hopes that she won’t be around the day he does allow himself to feel again, she would only want to help him but she knows just as well that whatever caused his emptiness, it would quite possibly break her were she to touch him when he feels.

She lifts her hand. Their eyes meet. A moment of understanding passes between them.

“I’m sorry.” he says, still with the exact same look in his eyes, the remnants of the smiling mask still clinging to his expression.

“No. _I_ am.” Her voice is shaking an her face is wet with tears - her own, for once - tears she hadn’t even realised she’d cried, too lost in the emptiness.

He raises his hand as if to offer comfort, but thinks better of it, ever considerate of her abilities. How the others think him brash and self-absorbed is beyond her. Instead, he just turns away, looking back towards the darkening sky, seeing nothing.

She remains at his side for a few minutes before getting up. She doesn’t say goodbye as she leaves the balcony, knowing he won’t mind.

Walking back inside, she only now notices that they have company. The red-haired woman, the dark-skinned man and the doctor with the controlled but never-ending well of anger inside him stare at her in a mix of surprise, shock, confusion and concern. Clearly, they have expected something else, for her to break down or rage the moment she touched him.

She wishes she could explain. She opens her mouth but all that leaves it is a shaking, desolate whisper. “He’s dead.”

They continue gaping as she walks away. She knows they don’t understand, how could they? They see him physically alive and breathing. They look at his masks and believe his acting. They don’t know that it’s _inside_ that he’s dead, that he’s been broken and hurt over and over again until it killed the _something_ that every living being has.

There’s nothing she can do except walk away, trying to shake off the lingering sense of void.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it? Any comments would absolutely make my day!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Пустота](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11072037) by [escuadrilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/escuadrilla/pseuds/escuadrilla)




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